of Francis Bacon Portrait of George Dyer crouching (1966) will be presented at Sotheby’s New York contemporary evening auction in May, making its first appearance on the market since its purchase from the Marlborough Gallery in 1970. The work is expected to fetch between $30 million and $50 million. It is one of 10 monumental portraits that Bacon painted between 1966 and 1968 of his lover and muse George Dyer.
Portrait of George Dyer crouching it stands over six feet tall and is one of the few works in this department to remain in private hands. This work depicts a shirtless Dyer with a double face that matches Bacon’s, giving the painting a sense of the psychological interdependence that defined the pair’s volatile romance. Their relationship, which began in 1963, greatly influenced Bacon’s later works, which often dealt with themes of human frailty.
“George Dyer’s first monumental portrait of his most famous subject by Francis Bacon, this painting is one of the artist’s most raw and intimate windows into a rollercoaster love affair,” said Grégoire Billault, president of contemporary art at Sotheby’s. “At times passionate, intense and sad, their relationship inspired many of Bacon’s most revered works and remains the source of legend.”
Sotheby’s sale Portrait of George Dyer crouching It will be the first time Dyer’s large-scale portrait has been offered at auction since 2014. Portrait of George Dyer talking (1966) sold for $70 million at Christie’s in London. Only 9 of Dyer’s 10 portraits in this series survive, after one was destroyed by fire in 1979.
